A limerick is funny, but terse,
A short and succinct piece of verse.
In only five lines
The humor it mines
Runs from ribald to bawdy to worse.
So there you have my home-made contribution to one of the least known May holidays, which arrives each year on the 12th: National Limerick Day.
The date was selected to honor the birthday in 1812 of Edward Lear, the English limerick writer and poet known mostly today as the author of “The Owl and the Pussycat.”
While Lear gave limericks popularity, his were more nonsense than reflective of an unassailable truth: The funniest limericks are, well, naughty.
The poet and humorist Dixon Lanier Merritt put that sentiment into verse when he observed:
The limerick packs laughs anatomical
Into space that is quite economical.
But the good ones I’ve seen
So seldom are clean,
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.
That’s a fact – so much so that the limericks in my 1969 anthology, edited by the critic and folklorist Gershon Legman, are all significantly off-color.
In fact, the aptly named Legman wrote of the book, “This is the largest collection of limericks ever published, erotic or otherwise. Of the 1,700 printed here, none are otherwise.”
Despite that, this lusty form of rhyme has a legion of champions,
not the least of which is the Smithsonian Institution, whose archives make note of limerick history and urge us to celebrate the day by writing our own, and sharing some of our favorites on social media.
The Smithsonian is not touting indelicacy, however. It notes that the subject matter for limericks can be “just about anything.”
And yes, some of the best limericks are indeed printable, including this bit of linguistic genius often attributed to American versifier Ogden Nash:
A wonderful bird is the pelican,
His bill can hold more than his belican.
He can hold in his beak
Enough food for a week.
But I’m damned if I see how the helican.
For limericks, attribution is sometimes difficult to track down, but here are a couple of clever examples that ignore the lascivious:
A maiden at college, Miss Breeze,
Weighed down by B.A.s and Lit.D.s,
Collapsed from the strain,
Said her doctor, “It’s plain:
You are killing yourself – by degrees.
And:
One Saturday morning at three,
A cheesemonger’s shop in Paree,
Collapsed to the ground
With a thunderous sound,
Leaving only a pile of de brie.
While a preponderance of limericks lean toward the risqué, some writers see the form as opportunity for more elevated messaging. This observation came from the physician-poet Oliver Wendall Holmes Sr., father of the Supreme Court justice:
God’s plan made a hopeful beginning.
But man spoiled his chances by sinning.
We trust that the story
Will end in God’s glory,
But at present the other side’s winning.
The possibilities are limitless, so with the holiday looming, why not write a limerick of your own?
My only advice to those who value propriety (especially those from Rhode Island) would be: Don’t encourage your mischievous side by starting a limerick with the classic and tempting (if you catch my drift), “There once was a man from Pawtucket…”
Gerry Goldstein (gerryg76@verizon.net), a frequent contributor, is a retired Providence Journal editor and columnist.
